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dyscopian · 7 years

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A Year on My Own

I’m terrible about blogging, or journal keeping in general. I’ve tried them all: previous tumblrs (agentslander which is now just a mess of SPN memes and gifs; the other is brendonurie, given to me by a friend years ago that kind of just turned into reblogging fan art because I feel obligated to post something when I have over 75k followers), word presses, bound books, composition notebooks and ugh, I wish that I could keep up with my bullet journal as well as I’d like, because I’m always coming across new spreads for it but I never stick to it.

It’s doubtful that this will be any different, but I’m into my third glass of wine and instead of working on any of my novels like I should be, I’m tinkering around with all the thoughts about my own life.

A blog has to start somewhere, and while I hope to use this more to run around with ideas for novels, character development and short stories, I also want to use it as a place to just work through my own thought processes.

My lease is almost up, which means it’s been almost a year now since I started out on this little venture that feels like true adulthood. I’ve been reflecting on that a lot over the last few weeks and just processing everything that’s happened in a year and what I’ve learned.

It’s funny how I have a ten year old daughter and had been married for several years but this last year has been the first year since 2008 that I’ve been on my own without living with roommates, friends, family or lovers. It’s given me a chance to really explore myself and find my identity in solitude. The last time I lived alone it was about finding my identity outside of my broken marriage, but this time around it’s had a more positive spin even if there’s been trials and tribulations.

I can sage my house without religious judgement, light incense and sit in a lowly lit room with a glass of wine or a bowl of weed and write, listen to music, read, mess around with tarot cards all while listening to music loudly or letting repeat episodes of Doctor Who play, or just enjoy the silence with the faint sound of my cat purring next to me or my chickens clucking around at my feet with their happy little trills.

That’s me, curled up on the couch watching documentaries on things that will kill in the Victorian home or watching Outlander and wishing the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who were real, because how awesome I think it would be to be sent back in time. I get to be weird and I get to be myself.

In the last year, I’ve graduated from college, learned how to take care of chickens of all things, found what I will and won’t tolerate in a job, friends and partner. I’ve met some of the most incredible people who have helped me discover things about myself. I’ve gotten out of a dead end relationship. I’ve learned the struggle of balancing bills on a low income, which has been a greater struggle than when I had been balancing them in a marriage.

I’ve been to a protest and experienced the rage of knowing the way the media twists events in favor of the system, in order to protect what’s broken rather than stand with the truth to fix it. I can stay out if I want to stay out and come home when I want without having to check in with someone.

These all seem like simple things and maybe I’m experiencing them later in life than a lot of other people but I met my ex husband when I was nineteen and from there never got to experience the independence that so many other people I know had before they settled down. And you never really know independence until you’re truly on your own.

I found out I can still break my own heart by falling for the wrong person. That may not seem like a beautiful thing, but it is. It’s been almost eight years since my divorce and nearly a decade since I let myself feel anything even close to relating to passion. People can’t hurt you if you don’t let them in and despite all my desires to let others in and trying my hand at a few relationships, I could never bring down my walls enough to give them any vulnerable part of me.

It threw me into this whole idea that I might be asexual, but I’m not. If anything, over the last year I’ve begun to embrace the fact that I am bisexual more than any other box that I might be shoved in and I’m standing up for that now, speaking louder about it rather than just shrugging it off and trying to figure out what’s so wrong with me that I can’t open up to the men that I thought I should be able to.

I chose relationships with people who I was better off being friends with and because of such the relationships lacked passion and chemistry because I tried to force myself to feel something that wasn’t there for me, like I was trying to fill a role I was supposed to fill; but, I know now that I am fully capable of feeling passion and taking risks in being vulnerable. That, regardless of the circumstances that make it impossible for anything to develop, says I’m not as dead inside after my divorce as I thought I was after nearly a decade of being shut down towards others. Which is incredibly beautiful. It’s the latest lesson I’ve learned and I almost didn’t get that chance.

I tried to commit suicide back in July. I downed an entire prescription of Amitriptyline days before Chester Bennington committed suicide and ended up in the hospital two days after I took the pills. It wasn’t rational or thought out. I was just exhausted. Every paycheck coming short for rent and my other bills. Starving myself for days to make sure my child got fed and utilities stayed on. Unhappy and unheard in my relationship.

I had gotten into a fight with my psychiatrist the day of the overdose because I had gone off a medication that was interfering with the Amitriptyline I had been given for my migraines by the neurologist that she had recommended I see. She took me entirely off my anxiety meds because I wasn’t “compliant”, when those were the pills I needed more than the ones I had been told to go off of by the neurologist. It was just a catalyst after trying for over a year to work with her to get into TALK therapy, only to be thrown on all these medications that were making me sick and making my mental state worse.

Just a few months prior I had lost my circle of supposed friends over childish drama with some girls whose popularity on the internet trumped rational thought and whose mindset hadn’t moved past the he said she said of high school. After my overdose, I lost the last one in that circle because my attempt was inconvenient for her and she put my business on the internet and the circumstances for over 1,500 strangers to see on her Facebook on how people shouldn’t talk about suicide to her because it upset her; almost within the same breath of having told me to always come to her when things get to how they were.

My attempt and Chester’s suicide so soon after was a wake up call. I hadn’t been that low since my ex husband and I had separated before the divorce. Even my miserable experience in Pennsylvania hadn’t gotten my mind that bad. I’m not a suicidal person by nature. I fear death, because there’s too much left in this world to experience and I thrive off learning. Can’t do that if you’re dead. I went off all the medications entirely and I’m myself again, able to cope better with my ups and downs without the chemicals in my head being thrown off by all these artificial replacements.

Not that I’m an advocate for that as it does help some people function better depending on their condition. It’s just I’ve never had a condition that anyone’s ever been able to pinpoint as one thing, so they never could figure out what medications I might actually need. Ask one doctor and they’ll tell you I’m bipolar. Ask another, they’ll tell you I suffer from PTSD from my childhood. Another tried to diagnose me with summer seasonal disorder. My old boss thought I was a mix of OCD, anxiety disorders and cyclothymia. As a teenager, they tried to diagnose me as borderline personality disorder, which has NEVER fit me and came with a stigma I never earned or deserved.

They don’t know anything and they don’t take the time to talk to me to find out anything, they just throw labels of diagnosis around. Psychiatry isn’t an exact science because we still don’t fully understand the brain. Pills don’t fix me, getting me to focus on my proper coping skills fixes me. I can only rely on myself for that. That’s why I art in any form I can, but most importantly, it’s why I write and I couldn’t write while so sick and drugged up.

The cocktail of medications I was on was what was killing me, not the stress, as I’ve been able to manage it better since my system’s been clean of anything but weed, my mini pill birth control (so no estrogen) for my endometriosis and B complex. But it’s another lesson I’ve had to relearn while balancing adulthood on my own and I’m thankful for that too, that I’m even still here. I shouldn’t be. Not after that much Amitriptyline. I’m not a religious person, but clearly I’m not done learning and experiencing. Chalk it up to whatever you believe in. I just think my story isn’t finished.

Being on my own has helped me escape. I grew up an only child, so I need space. I’m an empath by nature. My dad used to tell me I was too sensitive and I had to learn to quit, but I never did. It’s why I hate religion because I see how it hurts others and I feel that. I feel the political situation in this country and all the damage it’s causing to humanity. I’m a sponge for information, but I also take in all those emotions of everything and everyone around me. Animals, peoples, things. I feed off energy. It’s draining. I have a certain allotment of what I can handle socially and then I need my space from all human contact.

The independence I have now gives me that and I get the chance to detox from the world. I haven’t had the ability to do that in a long time, but I’ve had the chance this year to recognize how badly I needed that opportunity and to do so again, without judgement or people jumping to conclusions as to why I might not have any interest in socializing. It’s not a lack of interest, it’s too much interest. Now I know that it’s okay that I do that, that I step back sometimes, and I recognize that when I couldn’t before because I was always surrounded by people. It’s just me, who I am and I get to embrace it and that’s been eye opening. Everything this last year has been.

There’s no rhyme or reason for any of this. Consider these all just wine thoughts and reflection. I like to ramble. If anyone even read all this, kudos to you.

#personal #blog

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